APA Project P2021-0276
The project, in the APA's own terms
This page states the core project facts behind the campaign. It is not a substitute for the complete application and hearing record maintained by the Adirondack Park Agency.
- Applicant
- Unconventional Concepts, Inc.
- APA number
- P2021-0276
- Location
- Town of Lewis, Essex County, not Lewis County
- Work proposed
- Internal-ballistics testing of 155-millimeter cannon barrels
- Projectiles
- Steel projectiles into a designated target area
- Warheads
- Explosive warheads are not proposed
- Catch system
- A projectile-catching system has been proposed
- Schedule
- Thirty firings per year on weekdays
- Application year
- 2021
- Hearing
- Adjudicatory hearing scheduled for October 28, 2026
Why the counties
Supporting UCI is not a request to skip environmental review. It is a request that review operate through objective standards, technical evidence, reasonable conditions, and a decision. If legitimate engineering or environmental concerns can be mitigated through enforceable conditions, those conditions should be written and the project should move.
Five years without a final determination is itself a policy problem. The precedent does not stay on one Essex County parcel. The next applicant stuck in the same process could be proposing manufacturing, forestry, housing, telecommunications, tourism infrastructure, or energy development in any Adirondack county.
The proposed county resolution asks the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board to review the APA's handling of the file. New York Executive Law section 803-a authorizes that board to monitor administration of the Park plan and recommend action to the Governor, Legislature, and the twelve Park counties.